Audio question for you Premiere Pro vets...

T

tfg

Well-known member
Hi there -

FCP editor here who is loving the new PPro CS5 and is trying to convince my studio to do our next show on it.

I'm having trouble with one particular audio situation and so far all the help documents I've read aren't giving me an answer:

I'm trying to export a quicktime file with multiple audio tracks. For example: track 1 is a stereo track with all the camera audio, while track 2 is a stereo track with Music & effects.

My assumed path would be to create 2 submixes: 1 "camera" and 2 "music & Effects." I was then hoping to export a quicktime with each sub mix as a separate audio track inside the exported quicktime.

Can anyone help an old man out? ;)
 
To make sure I understand, are you saying that you want a file sort of like when you play a dvd and you can change the audio tracks to surround or stereo, or english to spanish, etc. Is that what you're trying to do?
 
P.S.T. said:
To make sure I understand, are you saying that you want a file sort of like when you play a dvd and you can change the audio tracks to surround or stereo, or english to spanish, etc. Is that what you're trying to do?
Click to expand...

Nope that's not what the end-goal is. I don't know anything about your professional background so please forgive me if this information is something you are familiar with:

Usually a broadcaster wants (at minimum) program audio on tracks 1&2, music/effects on channels 3&4 (I wont go into 5.1 mixes for sake of simplicity). In FCP you can map audio tracks to channels, which carries over onto the tape or quicktime files.

We use this in TV when creating final outputs. Since our final output to tape will have 4 channels: 1&2 as "full stereo mix" and 3&4 as "music and effects". A quicktime with 2 stereo tracks (1 stereo track as 'full mix' and 1 stereo track as "music & effects") can be created and distributed to any post-house and allow them to accomplish this. If the movie also has commentary, we include that in a separate track also.

Bottom line: it enables proper separation of audio elements for broadcast tape, but has many other useful applications. For example: we can create 1 final quicktime with all audio elements separated (camera audio / music / commentary / soundFX / etc) and distribute this file to various departments. Each department may have different sound requirements and therefore can mute/solo only the sound they need to hear.

I should also provide an update: I've spoken to Adobe about this feature on their forums. Their engineers have confirmed that Premiere is unable to do this right now, but they seem eager to implement in a future version.
 
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Wow, I sensed quicktime had some interesting features but nothing like that. I'm assuming that you need the pro upgrade of quicktime to manipulate the tracks during the broadcast, correct?
 
Yes that's correct -- you need quicktime pro on Windows - as far as I know. Any new mac with Snow Leopard comes standard with this feature also. This enables you to mute/solo or control volume and pan individually to each track. You can even resave the quicktime and your mute/solo/volume/pan settings will be saved for anyone you distribute the file to. Non-pro users will still inherit the new mix, but won't be able to change it.
 
Grr I can't stand it when FCP offers one little thing that can make a huge impact in workflow and Premiere is just left dancing.
 
The usual method for exporting audio from a video workstation such as Avid and Final Cut Pro has been 'OMFI' (Open Media File Interchange) which was developed by Avid many years ago. With Premiere Pro CS4, Adobe finally joined in this professional standard and also incorporated the rather newer file exchange standard of 'AAF' (Advanced Authoring Format).

Both these allow you to export your audio clips, exactly as they are placed on your video workstations timeline with both the same positions for 'time' and 'track' retained. Exactly what's needed for a sound man...to know where the picture editor placed each piece of sync, fx or music without wasted 'blank audio air' filling up the export.
So a piece of sync dialogue at 01:01:34 on audio track 3 say, arrives on the receiving audio workstation on audio track 3 at 01:01:34.

This is how I receive just about all the audio trhat comes into my sound dubbing suite and nowadays these 'OMFI' or 'AAF' files are aften just passed over on a simple pen drive.
Get a matching picture QuickTime, with the editors 'rough guide audio mix' on it and we're ready to go.

It's expected that a picture editor will 'consolidate' his audio on exporting ie reduce the overall size of each audio clip to only include a small 'handle' either side. This is necessary because OMFI has a file limit of 2Gb.PP lets you do this but do stick with an 'embedded' file (PP might call it something else) but you want the 'OMFI audio' and the ' OMFI text' file in the same folder.
Having said that Adobe do need to improve some of their interfacing for both OMFI and AAF files.
I find that an 'embedded' OMFI from Premiere Pro CS4 or 5 usually works OK unless the editor has nested one sequence into another...PP doesn't like that. and it'll not export what you need. PP also fails to tell you if the 2Gb limit has been reached, it just stalls. I notice PP thinks everyone in the audio world is working on 'Pro Tools' so it calls the OMFI export that... thank god were not though...I'm on a Fairlight!

AAF is OK from PP, no limit to file size but it will also try and export the video....not a good idea because that'll fail in PP, so just make a sequence with no video...it'll want to keep 1 video track but it can be empty.
Good luck.
 
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